Hidden inside dear sit dare, dear, and read, four-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 5 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 16 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
dare, dear, and read tie for the highest Scrabble score from dear at 5 points. The top 10 of 16 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 3 four-letter words hiding in dear: two come from rearranging its letters, and dear itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. Here the everyday answers and the top-scoring plays are one and the same: dare, dear, and read, worth 5 points apiece in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling dear turns up 5 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with are, ear, era, and red. For points, the strongest plays are rad and red — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 8 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in dear. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ad. For points, the strongest plays are ad, da, de, and ed — each worth 3 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
69 five-letter words can be made using all the letters in dear plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in dear and you get a different four-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 3 of the 4 letters, not all of them.
dear is in the NWL, the official Scrabble word list for North America, and in the Words With Friends dictionary, so it's playable exactly as it stands and needs no unscrambling.
Both totals match, because every tile in dear carries the same value on a Scrabble board and on a Words With Friends board.
Dictionaries record eight senses for dear. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 5 points on a Scrabble board:
dear is one of three four-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing dear unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are dare, dear, and read, worth 5 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from dear earns more points in Scrabble. Words With Friends prices the same letters differently, so the top of the list changes on a Words With Friends board. Both scores count tile values only and exclude premium squares.
The letters in dear produce 16 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 3 four-letter words, 5 three-letter words and 8 two-letter words.